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When curators are researching a future exhibition, they often ask the library staff to put some books on reserve. The books a curator puts on reserve may provide some insights about her approach to an exhibition or enhance our understanding of the exhibition.

on a curator’s reserve shelf

Michelle Puetz is the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the MCA. She recently curated the BMO Harris Bank Chicago Works: Lilli Carré exhibition, which featured all new animations, drawings, and ceramic sculptures by the artist. Michelle has been working on various preservation, acquisition, and long-term storage projects related to the museum’s collection of time-based media art, and has been researching sound artist Max Neuhaus’s site specific audio installation in the stairwell of the MCA’s former Ontario Street building. She is currently organizing an exhibition titled Body Doubles, which draws on works from the MCA Collection, so a lot of her research involves old MCA publications. Body Doubles looks at how artists explore identity, gender, and doubling in contemporary art and will focus on artists who depict the human body as a site for transformation.

Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984, by David Crowley, et al. (2012)

Music/Sound, 1948-1993: The Performed and Recorded Music/Sound of Michael Snow, Solo and with Various Ensembles, His Sound-films and Sound Installation: Improvisation/Composition from 1948 to 1993, by Michael Snow (1994)